The Astros have advanced to their fifth straight American League Championship Series and will face a familiar foe. And while it is true that the Astros will play the Red Sox like they did in the 2017 DS and 2018 CS, I say that the Red Sox are a familiar foe because they look a lot like the Astros.
Their offense is one of the best in baseball because they have a very deep offense, and will start 8 players with an above average OPS+. Their pitching staff lacks a true ace, but have a rotation of #2, #3, and #4 starters that are capable of getting outs. They have a handful of trusted arms in the bullpen and a number of question marks.
Each of these sentences describes the Red Sox, but they also describe the Astros. A look at the numbers shows that the Astros are slightly better at both run scoring and run prevention than the Red Sox. From that perspective, they have an advantage in the talent on the roster.
But that edge in talent for the Astros is challenged by health of Lance McCullers. Reports today indicate that McCullers will miss the ALCS due to the "forearm tightness" he suffered in his Game 4 start in Chicago. The Astros would have to replace potentially two McCullers starts with an extra start by Jose Urquidy and a Game 4 start by either Zack Greinke or Jake Odorizzi. This is not fatal, but certainly reduces the Astros chances of winning.
Mirror Images on Offense
The team batting stats for the Astros and Red Sox show how much these teams mirror each other. Both teams score a lot of runs mostly by having a high batting average. Neither had huge power (they are separated by only 2 home runs on the season), but generate high slugging percentages primarily by hitting lots of singles and doubles.
Yet, for just about every category on this chart the Astros hold a slight advantage. They score more runs, have a higher batting average, on base percentage, OPS, and they hit more home runs. These are slight but consistent advantages for the Astros. The Red Sox have an advantage in slugging percentage, largely due to leading the majors in doubles with 330 (the Astros are 3rd at 299).
Where the Astros have a clear advantage is in strike zone judgment. Both teams avoid strikeout better than the average team, but the Astros do it better than any team in baseball. And both teams are in the middle third at drawing walks, but the Astros are better at this.
Both teams feature lineups that go deep with high quality hitters. The table at the right lists the 9 starters each team used in the Division Series and ranks them by OPS+. OPS+ is a stat that takes a player's OPS (On base percentage Plus Slugging percentage) and after account for park effects, puts it on a scale where 100 is league average, and numbers above it are better.
Each team has a playoff lineup with 8 players who were league average or better hitters this season. Only the two catchers are below average hitters.
I sorted the lineups by OPS because it shows the superior depth of the Astros lineup. Kyle Schwarber had a better OPS+ than Kyle Tucker, but the 2nd best Astros OPS+ (Yordan Alvarez) is better than the 2nd best Red Sox OPS+ (Rafael Devers). So is the 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, and 8th best Astro OPS+. The biggest difference is in 5th best, where Jose Altuve has an OPS+ of 127 while Hunter Renfroe has an OPS+ of 112.
In many ways, the Red Sox provide a great measuring stick for the Astros offense. The Red Sox have an excellent and deep offense that does lots of things well. That the Astros offense outhits and is deeper than the Red Sox offense shows you how good the Astros offense is.
Similar Pitching Staffs, Dissimilar Defenses
The two offenses will be the stars of this series, as the two pitching staffs are less accomplished.
When you look at the three true outcomes, the Red Sox seem to have an advantage. They gave up fewer homers than Astro hurlers and struck out a higher share of batters and walked a smaller share of batters than did Astro hurlers this year. The teams were again similar in each of these areas, but there is a clear edge to the Red Sox. This should be the foundation of a pitching advantage for the Red Sox.
But that foundation cracks when you look at the numbers once a batter makes contact. Astros pitchers allowed opponents a batting average of .228, while Red Sox hurlers did much worse, allowing a .258 batting average against. This 40 point advantage in batting average shows up in the Astros advantage in OBP against (.306 to .332), SLG against (.381 to .417), and OPS against (.687 to .749). On each of these measures, the Astros are in the top third in the league, while the Red Sox are in the bottom third of the league in all of these categories except SLG. Overall, the Astros gave up half a run less per game than did the Red Sox.
What explains the big difference in results between Astros and Red Sox pitchers? It is not the pitchers; it's the fielders.
The table at the right shows the defensive rankings for the two teams, and here is the first place where we see a large advantage for one of the teams. The Astros have one of the best defenses in major league baseball. And the Red Sox...do not.
Defensive metrics are notoriously finicky, and we see that in the Red Sox numbers. They are ranked worst in the league by Fielding Runs Above Average. In other measures, such as Defensive Runs Saved, Ultimate Zone Rating, and Outs Above Average, the Red Sox rank in the bottom half of the league. But for each of these measures, the Astros rank among the top handful of team in the majors.
The defensive advantage is most shown by the BABIP measure. BABIP stands for batting average on balls in play. One way to think of this is that it is the percentage of times when a team fails to record an out on a fair ball that is not a home run. The Astros have the third best BABIP allowed , as opponents got a hit only 27.4% they made contact in the field of play. The Red Sox are deal last in the majors, allowing opponents to reach base 32.3% of the time they make contact.
The Astros advantage in preventing runs is almost entirely an advantage in defense over the Red Sox. The Astros are 5% more likely than the Red Sox to convert a batted ball into an out. Over a 162 game schedule, the defensive advantage translated into the Astros allowing half a run per game less than the Red Sox.
Who Will Pitch?
The Astros season long advantage in run prevention over the Red Sox is challenged by two injuries. The first is the "forearm tightness" that Lance McCullers suffered in Game 4 of the ALDS. While some media reports said he would be off the ALCS roster, general manager James Click said today that no decision would be made on McCullers until ALCS rosters were due tomorrow. I do not expect him to pitch, but hope I am wrong. If McCullers cannot pitch, the Astros will likely move up Jose Urquidy from a Game 4 start to a start in Game 3, and presumably again in Game 7 if necessary. They will have to fill Urquidy's Game 4 spot with either Zack Greinke or Jake Odorizzi. There is a downgrade from McCullers's 3.16 ERA to Urquidy's 3.62. There is a bigger downgrade to Greinke (4.16) or Odorizzi (4.21).
For the Red Sox, there injury story is a return from injury. Chris Sale is an ace level pitcher, and he returned in August from Tommy John surgery. And while Sale pitched well after his return (3.16 ERA), he managed only 42.2 innings in 9 starts. In Game 2 of the ALCS, he gave up 5 runs and only lasted an inning in a Game 2 start. It remains to be seen if Sale stays in the Red Sox rotation, but I expect he will make a start this series. He is by talent the best Red Sox pitcher, but he may not be full strength. limiting his impact.
The Red Sox seem to have three pitcher who manager Alex Cora trusts in Nathan Eovaldi, Tanner Houck, and Garrett Whitlock. Cora tried to mix and match the rest of this pitchers in their series against the Rays, and the Red Sox won because of their offense--scoring 26 runs in 4 games.
The injury to McCullers takes away the Astros Game 1 starter, but a rotation of Framber Valdez, Luis Garcia, and Jose Urquidy are all above average pitchers, and each has a higher ERA+ than the equivalent Red Sox starter (Eovaldi, Houck, and Nick Pivetta). The Astros have a more settled back of the bullpen than do the Red Sox, but the Red Sox have stronger middle innings options, especially if Sale starts and the Sox can use somebody like Pivetta or Houck in the multi-inning relief roles they shined in during the Rays series.
These are two similar teams. The one clear advantage in the series is on defense, where the Astros have a big edge over the Red Sox. That may the edge in this series.
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